Race--always more complicated than you think it is

[Warning: Another long and rambling post--there's just something about all these racial incidents happening that loosens the fingers on my keyboard]

It's nearing the end of July, and after perusing the list of blog entries I've written this month, I've noticed that there have been A LOT of things I blogged about this month--a lot of news items related to what seemed, to me, to be obvious instances of racism/white privilege/racial insensitivity. From items relatively innocuous as Kristof's list of best kids' books (I'd put that on the "racial insensitivity" end of the spectrum or perhaps "white privilege") to the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Junior and the question of racial profiling.

I say the question of racial profiling, because there seems to be disagreement about whether this was, in fact, a case of racial profiling and, perhaps more to the point of this post, whether race played any factor in the arrest of Professor Gates.

If you are a regular reader, you know that I've already vented through a very long, very rambling, and non-educator's rant on the topic of the prevalence of race and racism in our supposedly post-racial society.

What I want to do now is to put my teacher hat back on. Because the truth is, race is always more complicated than we think it is. It's certainly much more complicated than I understand it to be, and I am someone who thinks about race A LOT. I read books about race. I read blogs about race. I talk about race, both to people who I consider to be part of the choir as well as others who probably think I am a tone deaf singer. And yet, after all this reading and thinking and writing and talking, I'm never certain that I have a handle on race and racism--because it's SO SLIPPERY.

And one of the slippery things that has just emerged is the release of the 911 tapes form Gates arrest. And the tape does not conform to the news reports that came out in the aftermath of the arrest nor the assumptions many of us made based on these reports.

I had, like many others, assumed that Lucia Whalen jumped to the racist conclusion that two black men trying to open a stuck door must be burglars and that she myopically ignored obvious evidence: the luggage, the way the men were dressed, the town car. However, the 911 tape reveals that Lucia Whalen had not just been casually walking by when she made the call--that she called on behalf of an elderly neighbor who had just moved into the neighborhood. And Whalen admits that while she didn't recognize either man, she did speculate that they may live at the residence because she mentions seeing luggage on the porch. And when pressed to identify the men--to describe their race, she says that she is unsure but believes one man to be "Hispanic"--she never described either men as African American, and according to her attorney, she never spoke directly to Officer Crowley except to identify herself as the one who placed the 911 call. In other words, she claims, through her lawyer, that she did NOT tell Crowley that she saw two black men with backpacks trying to break open the door.

I should note that Whalen also does not seem to get all the details right--she describes two "large" men--yet anyone who has seen Professor Gates would describe him as a slight man. I also don't want to absolve Whalen from her part in this whole incident. While she may not have described the two men as "black"--the fact that she didn't go over and simply ask if they needed help--that she didn't inquire about who they were; to introduce herself as someone who works for Harvard University through their magazine and to render assistance--because she, herself, says that “I don’t know if they live there and just had a hard time with their key"--leaves me wondering whether unconscious bias and stereotypes of black men as criminals didn't somehow enter her mind when she placed the call on behalf of the elderly neighbor. If she works on that street, chances are she had to have a good hunch that the house was owned by Harvard University--she could have easily placed a call into the housing rental office rather than call 911 to find out who lived there and to report that there seemed to be two men breaking into the unit. Why didn't she just talk to the men, really, that's what I want to know. It was the middle of the day. She didn't have to go up on the porch, she simply could have called out from the sidewalk and offered aid/assistance, and her instincts could have then taken over if she felt anything was amiss--and she could then assuage the fears of the neighbor, perhaps even facilitating an introduction between Gates and the elderly neighbor.

Whalen's remarks and the article in The New York Times clarifies something I had been puzzled about, namely why Gates had not been troubled by Whalen calling the police--why he was not angry with her or why he did not accuse her of racial profiling him. And why all his anger seems to be (or seemed to be) directed at Crowley and the Cambridge Police. Because it's pretty damning evidence to have Whalen's tape and her statement via her lawyer claiming that she never identifies Gates or his driver as black (and for the record, Gates's driver is actually Moroccan not African American, as Gates clarifies).

So why does Crowley write in the police report that the caller identifies 2 black men on the porch with backpacks? Why does Crowley at first claim that Gates was so unruly and loud in his house that he couldn't speak to his dispatcher, yet clearly the tapes reveal that he did speak to his dispatcher and requests police backup and the presence of the Harvard police because he apparently fears for his life.

Yet things don't add up. If he was so afraid of Gates, why enter his home? Why follow him to his kitchen while Gates goes to retrieve his id? Why not just wait on the porch for Gates to show him the id and/or wait for police back-up to arrive? What could Gates possibly do in the five-minute interval it would take for Harvard police to arrive to confirm his identity? Steal something and run out the backdoor? Since Gates walks with a cane, it'd be hard for him to get very far. If Crowley is such a veteran of the police force and sensitive to racial profiling, why wouldn't he be courteous to Gates from the get-go? Why not simply wait for an invitation to come in or wait on the porch and, most importantly, what goes wrong in the communication between the dispatcher and Crowley--is he the one who ignores the comment about the luggage being on the porch or that the caller thought that one of the men could live there--that she wasn't certain this was an instance of a break-in? Why doesn't Crowley do what Gates had assumed he would do--politely introduce himself, tell him that there has been a report of a break in, and ask if Gates is the residence of the home and can produce id. Even if Gates still went ballistic, the whole incidence could have been easily defused from that point, something Crowley should have known as an instructor sensitive to issues of racial profiling.

Crowley has refused to apologize to Gates--which makes me believe that it's his pride that is at stake--that as a white police officer, someone who believes that he is sensitive to issues of race, someone who claims to have a "mixed" group of friends, that he doesn't believe he did anything worth apologizing for. And yet, if Obama has to retract the word "stupidly"--if Obama, the president of the United States and the most powerful man in our nation (at least supposedly, right) recants the remarks about the Cambridge police acting stupidly, Crowley can't muster the same type of humility and swallow his pride and apologize for at least SOME of his actions and remarks? Instead, he acts like he's the victim--he goes on radio talk shows and gets interviewed by media outlets claiming he is the one who is the victim in this whole situation.

And that, my friends, is white male privilege. Crowley doesn't believe he has to apologize because everything in his upbringing--everything he is told by society, especially given his line of work, tells him that there is nothing HE has to apologize to anyone. He is the ultimate symbol of white male authority--he is a white police officer.

Was this a simple case of racial profiling and racism? Nothing is ever that simple. But to ignore the evidence--to ignore the history of African Americans in this nation, especially their relationship with police officers, is to be blind to the way that race, racism, and white privilege operate in our world.

Finally, I give the last word in this post to Dr. R. L’Heureux Lewis, a Sociology and black studies professor at CUNY who has written a very insightful post about flash point racism. And in the spirit of Dr. Lewis, I do hope we can untangle the complexities of race and have a richer dialogue about race and racism, because as I've already repeated in this post (and in this post's title): race is always more complicated than you think it is.

Judgment Part II

I want to make a clarification from the previous post on "Judgment." A friend wrote me privately and expressed dismay at what he believed was my unfair prejudice against white people and my unconditional embrace of people-of-color. More specifically, he was dismayed that I would not have locked my door against a person-of-color acting in the same manner as the young white man because I would not have been afraid of the person-of-color in the same way that I was afraid of the white man.

Actually, I would have been equally nervous due to the circumstances (nighttime) and the behavior (approaching cars, erratic hand gestures) whether it was a white person or a person of color. But the difference, I think (because this is all conjecture) is that I would not have locked my door consciously because I would be too aware that my actions would be tinged and possibly regarded as a reaction of race rather than circumstance. It goes back to the helpful comments posted from the last blog entry--I am being too hard on myself about judgment because it is natural to have some anxiety driving in an urban area at night and being approached by a man who is acting in a somewhat erratic behavior.

I wrote the post (as I write many of the posts) both to be provocative (in the best sense of provoking discussion and thought) but also to really challenge myself (and possibly others) to consider the kinds of quick judgments that we make about people--and how oftentimes they are based on race.

I do believe that I may put myself in danger one day by having this kind of reaction--that there may well be a person of color acting in an erratic manner who may do violence against me and I may second-guess my reaction due to the kinds of anti-racist thinking and training I've been doing over the years. In fact, a friend of mine shared a story that I think illustrates this quite well. She once owned a store in Boston, and this friend is a white Jewish American woman, educated and trained in anti-racist thinking and practice. A young black man entered her store, and she felt nervous, but quickly dismissed her fear as residual white racism. The young man, after browsing for a bit and waiting for the other people in the store to leave, pulled out a gun and demanded money from her register. After some years had passed, and she told me this story, what she came away with was the fact that racism did inhibit her instinctual judgment. Because her visceral response to the man was that there was something wrong--in his body language, in his manner of walking into the store--but she believed it was her internalized racism coming out rather than seeing the man for the threat that he was. This is part of the legacy of racism, because she was trying to account for his race in a different manner rather than to see him as a man who is threatening.

The legacy of institutional racism is such that we often second-guess ourselves about people either living up to or defying the stereotypes. It goes back to the Vietnamese nail salon post--there are many nail salons owned by Vietnamese people. I'd even say that whether they are owned or whether they simply work in them, my anecdotal evidence places it to be about 70-50%, which is definitely higher than the population of Vietnamese Americans in the Bay Area let alone the nation. This doesn't mean, however, that every Vietnamese woman you meet works in a nail salon. Yes, black, Latino, and Asian people commit violent crimes and robberies. And there are many white people who live and practice anti-racist values. And there are certainly many people of color who hold bigoted and even racist beliefs. But there is a difference between a system of racism and individual acts of racism and bigotry, which is going to be the subject of my next post.

Judgment

I've been thinking a lot about judgment, primarily about being judgmental and judging others. It's easy to be judgmental because it's a human thing to judge--to form opinions. But there is a line between having an opinion and making a judgment (and then there's being righteous, but that's the topic for another post). I don't want to get too personal about why I'm thinking about judgment, although anyone who has returned home and been around large numbers of your extended family in an emotional time can understand that this is a topic that may come up.

I do want to share something I did yesterday that I wasn't proud of. My brother and I were driving at night in San Francisco. I haven't driven in the city in a while and always get a bit frazzled with the traffic, one way streets, and aggressive drivers (I've lived in the South too long now and am used to a slower pace). We were stopped at an intersection near the Civic Center and there was a young white man with dreds, who may have been homeless and may have been mentally unstable (he was making certain repetitive hand gestures in an odd fashion). He was panhandling along the median, approaching the drivers of the stopped cars, and as he approached our car, I locked my driver side door.

That's the first time I've ever done that. Did I really think I would be harmed by this guy? Did I really feel so unsafe? It was an automatic reaction and I've wondered what kind of judgments I was making in that split second. I also wonder if I would have done this if he was a person of color. I don't think I would have. I think I've tried to train myself in anti-racist practices that even though I may have been inclined to do it if the man had been black, Latino, or Asian, I wouldn't have because I would have felt I was perpetuating certain racist beliefs. And yet a white guy with dreds is someone I can be free to make judgments about because I think he may be a bit crazy and therefore a threat.

Again, perhaps I'm overthinking the whole thing. But still, my automatic reactions and judgments don't reflect well on me. Perhaps I need to be thinking more about compassion, because that's really the flip side of judgment--to find a place of common humanity and compassion.

Airport Anxiety

I'm leaving today for California and since I'll be flying I'm bound to experience a fair amount of anxiety. I'm not *exactly* afraid of flying, but I also don't like the sensation. And in a post-9/11 world, it becomes more cumbersome to negotiate the airport.

I also feel a certain amount of anxiety about race--a type of racial paranoia not based in anything "real" because I don't even think I get targeted at airports (unlike other friends, who I believe ARE singled out, because they are of Muslim/Middle Eastern descent and/or look like they are of Arab ancestry I really can't say I have been taken out of line too often--of course now that I write that, I'm sure to be on the list of suspicious characters on this trip).

No, I think my anxiety is just due to the reality that you don't see a lot of people of color at airports--perhaps this is in correct proportions to the US racial demographics, but I'm always struck by how few people of color, esp. Asian Americans I see at airports outside of the West Coast.

And really, I just don't like to fly.

Repeating History

There is something, for me, about the stories of the Japanese American Internment that makes me get choked up. Or angry. Or both.

And I feel a similar sense of pain in hearing about stories that have emerged post-9/11 about the Arab and Muslim American community.

The convergence of these two issues, Japanese American Internment and Detention of Arab and Muslim Americans, esp. issues at Guantanamo Bay, converge in our contemporary political discourse, but perhaps one of the most moving examples is in this short film Day of Remembrance, which was produced by Cynthia Gates Fujikawa (who also has an excellent film called Old Man River)

Day of Remembrance is an 8 minute film clip--if you go to the website below and click on film #9, you can watch it:

Day of Remembrance (film #9)

Please, take 10 minutes to look at this clip. It's powerful. I've seen it at least half a dozen times, and I cry every time. And I get angry. And I want to act. What we need is organization and leadership for our actions, a place where we collectively can shout NO to the kinds of injustices happening around the world. Can someone please tell me where that place is...

We Will Not Be Silent

About a year ago, an Arab American architect, Raed Jarrar, was detained by Jet Blue and the TSA at JFK Airport because he was wearing a tee-shirt that had Arabic lettering and the English translation, "We Will Not Be Silent" underneath.

To hear more about Jarrar's story, go to these following links:

You Tube

ACLU

Essentially, Jarrar was not allowed to board the airplane until he put on a different tee-shirt over the one that read "We Will Not Be Silent." The phrase originated from a student resistant group in Germany in the 1930s, The White Rose, and this slogan was used in a newsletter to protest against Hitler's regime and institutionalization of fear and anxiety and xenophobia. It is a rallying cry of protest against a government who is not listening to the needs of its citizens--who is acting unilaterally and losing credibility and respect from the international community.

Sound familiar?

If you want to learn more about the group who produced the tee-shirts (they gave Jarrar one, which is why he ended up wearing it, not thinking it would provoke the reaction it did) go to the link for Artists Against the War here -- you can also order a tee-shirt for yourself.

I don't know if I can get one in time for my trip to the PacificNorthwest, and it's probably not the smartest thing to do. But it's a very small act of resistance, and once I get my tee-shirt, I will be wearing it out and about. Then again, it's very different for me to show up at the airport wearing this tee-shirt than for someone who looks like Raed Jarrar (and with his name and his accent). But still, if we don't resist these small acts, what will happen when the larger ones happen (or are happening)?